Portable electronic devices, such as cellular telephones, pagers, radios, CD players, tape players, laptop and hand-held computers, and the like, include a variety of electronic components confined within a housing. Often, the housing includes a compartment or container which must be occasionally accessed by the user, but is closed during normal usage. For example a battery compartment and/or a subscriber identity module (SIM) compartment serve as such containers.
A portable electronic device generally needs to go where people go. In other words, a portable electronic device desirably withstands the precipitation, dust and accidental liquid spillage elements that people routinely encounter in daily life. An accessible container which houses electronic parts typically has electrical contacts so that the electronic components, such as a battery or SIM, retained in the accessible container can be in electrical communication with the remaining electrical components of the device. Unfortunately, when such contacts are exposed to the elements, they tend to corrode and/or become less electrically isolated from one another. Accordingly, providers of portable electronic devices and of other products, wish to use containers which are sealed against the elements so that the reliability and usefulness of their products will be extended.
While the art of container-sealing has long been practiced, the ability to obtain suitable seals typically comes at some expense or potential for new problems when following conventional container-sealing practices. For example, sealing techniques that require separate gaskets are unduly expensive for many applications due to the expense of the gasket and cost of assembly. In addition, such techniques are prone to customer dissatisfaction if the gasket is easily lost or difficult to maintain in place while installing an access hatch. Moreover, sealing techniques that require the use of tools or of great force to remove and install the access hatch are unsuitable for many applications where many users may not possess the needed tools or strength required to access the container.
In portable electronic devices, the expenses and potential customer satisfaction problems associated with sealing a container are sufficiently great that sealing is often omitted altogether. Thus, a rigid molded access hatch often attaches as tightly as practical over a rigid molded receptacle at an opening in the receptacle, leaving gaps, holes or cracks into the container at the seam and in the area of latches and hinges. This technique may be adequate for moderate dust protection, but is typically inadequate for heavy dust, precipitation and liquid spillage protection.
In some prior art portable electronic devices, a captive seal is used to protect even against heavy dust, precipitation and liquid spillage. In such devices an access hatch attaches over a receptacle opening, and the receptacle opening is surrounded by an O-ring captured in a channel that has been molded into the receptacle. However, this is an undesirable solution because it requires an extra component (i.e., the O-ring) and extra manual labor for assembly, thereby increasing costs. Moreover, it is an undesirable solution because it consumes too much space, which is at a premium in portable electronic devices. In particular, the formation of a channel to capture an O-ring typically requires the receptacle surrounding the receptacle opening to be wide enough to accommodate twice the thickness of the receptacle wall plus the diameter of the O-ring.